‘“Madame told me to, monsieur, about half-past eleven. She said you would be very late and that she would be sitting up.”
‘“All right,” I said, “where is Madame?”
‘He hesitated.
‘“I don’t know, monsieur,” he said at length.
‘“Don’t know?” I said. I was growing angry. “Has she gone to bed?”
‘“She has not gone to bed, monsieur,” he answered.
‘I am not, M. de Chef, an imaginative man, but suddenly a feeling of foreboding swept over me. I hurried into the drawing-room and from that to my wife’s small sitting-room. They were both empty. I ran to her bedroom. There was no one there. Then I recollected she had frequently waited for me in my study. I went there to find it also untenanted, and I was just about to withdraw when I saw on my desk a letter which had not been there earlier in the evening. It was addressed to me in my wife’s handwriting, and, with a terrible sinking of the heart, I opened it. Here, M. le Chef, it is.’
It was a short note, written on a sheet of cream-laid notepaper and without date or address. It read:—
‘I do not ask you to forgive me for what I am doing to-night, Raoul, for I feel it would be quite too much to expect, but I do ask you to believe that the thought of the pain and annoyance it will be bound to give you cuts me to the heart. You have always been just and kind according to your lights, but you know, Raoul, as well as I do, that we have never loved each other. You have loved your business and your art collection, and I have loved—Léon Felix, and now I am going to him. I shall just disappear, and you will never hear of me again. You, I hope, will get your divorce, and be happy with some more worthy woman.
‘Good-bye, Raoul, and do not think worse of me than you can help.